TERRAFORMING TERRA
We discuss and comment on the role agriculture will play in the containment of the CO2 problem and address protocols for terraforming the planet Earth.
A model farm template is imagined as the central methodology. A broad range of timely science news and other topics of interest are commented on.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Paper on Chinese Rice Lead Retracted

This article is a really good examination of the real difficulties
every scientist faces in his attempts to produce good data. Yes,
these folks muffed it and they should have done much better, but that
it happened at all is a reminder that most data gathering starts of
with a ton of mistakes. Then you figure out what works and all is
good.

Let me share a story with you. When we assay for copper values in a
strange piece of rock, we send it to the lab and a value comes back.
All good if the chemistry is something the lab is used to.

However imagine instead that we are dealing with calcite which is a
pure copper sulfur mineral. This takes a long time to digest. When
it happened to me, I had sent in three samples and the related grades
were .55% .56% and .55%. good enough but not important enough. Yet
I spotted immediately that there was no meaningful scatter which told
me that the lab process had cut off too soon. When they were done, I
got well scattered grades, all over one percent. The immediate take
home for copper is that real ore is not been properly identified
easily. Actually any black rock could be suspect.

I would in fact suggest that the major risk lies in not getting the
data rather than an actual false positive. False positives are
followed up on while false negatives are generally ignored.

Exclusive:
Scientific paper that announced high levels of lead in rice suddenly
retracted by its author

(NaturalNews)
A recent scientific paper that concluded imported rice was heavily
contaminated with lead has been suddenly withdrawn by its author.
Natural News has confirmed from the author, Monmouth
University Chemistry
Professor Tsanangurayi Tongesayi, that the paper is "recalled
until further notice."

The
paper, announced
with great fanfareat
the American
Chemical Society last
week, was also accepted for publication in the Journal
of Environmental Science and Health, Part B:
Pesticides, Food Contaminants, and Agricultural Waste. It found that
some sources of rice, including rice from China, were contaminated
with as much as 12,000% more lead than allowed under current safety
limits for children.

The
story was widely published across the media, including Natural News.
Its findings, after all, were consistent with many other findings
about the contamination of foods grown in heavily polluted countries.
So no one thought the conclusions might be in doubt. When we hear
about "scientists" conducted metals analysis in foods, we
tend to think they know what they're doing, right?

But
the authors themselves discovered worrisome discrepancies when they
sent the samples to a third-party lab for verification. According to
an email acquired by Natural News, the results from this third-party
lab showedall
sub-ppm levels of lead,
not the much higher numbers the Tongesayi team had reported.

Why
the Tongesayi team did not conduct third-party lab
verification before announcing
the results has not been explained.

Analysis
machine somehow produced flawed data

What
has been revealed, however, is that the original lead results were
determined through the use of an "XRF" spectroscopy machine
which uses X-Ray Fluorescence to profile the elemental composition of
the sample.

Most
likely, the Tongesayi team was using theBTX
Benchtop XRDequipment,
which is about the size of a bread maker and, compared to high-end
spectroscopy equipment, also costs about the same as a bread maker.
(See below for more analysis of XRF versus atomic spectroscopy / mass
analyzers.)

We
measured the levels of lead in rice that is imported into the U.S.
using XRF and the data was validated using a NIST1568a reference
sample. Lead levels ranged from 5.95 +/- 0.72 to 11.9 +/- 0.6 mg/kg
and the calculated Daily Exposure amounts were significantly higher
than the Provisional Total Tolerable Intakes for all age groups.

Translation:What
they're basically saying is that they foundleadat
levels of 6 to 12 ppm in rice. But as you'll see below, these numbers
are completely wrong.

2012 tests from
Consumer Reports reveal roughly 1,000 times LOWER levels of lead in
rice

Here's
another clue worth considering in all this. In 2012, Consumer Reports
published results of itslead
analysis of 223 brands of rice.
They also measured arsenic and cadmium in rice.

If
you click the link above, the chart you'll see is shown inparts
per BILLION.
These numbers, in other words, are 1/1000th the value of numbers
given in parts per million. As a reminder, 1000 ppb = 1 ppm.

If
someone asks you, "Would you rather each 500 ppm of lead, or 500
ppb of lead?" the correct answer is ppb.

Here's
a screen shot of the Consumer Reports report (link above):

The
Tongesayi team was announcing that it foundriceto
contain highppmof
lead. But the Consumer Reports team -- which of course has decades of
experience running tightly-controlled lab analysis activities -- was
only reporting lead atppbin
rice.Somebody
is off by a factor of 1,000. That's three orders of magnitude. And
I'd bet my favorite pair of hiking boots it's not Consumer Reports.

Why
I was absolutely shocked to learn these studies were conducted via
XRF

Consumer
Reports, it turns out, conducted its study of rice using what it
called "ICP-DRC-MS." I discuss this is more detail below,
but the "DRC" just means it's a jazzed up ICP-MS "mass
spec"machineusing
a Dynamic Reaction Cell. This technology helps eliminate polyatomic
interferences (i.e. false readings) through the use of a highly
reactive gas (like oxygen) that is allowed to bleed into the analyzer
and "react" with problematic ions. The result is a
detection limit that approaches low parts per trillion,
depending on the element. (Plus, your lab gets the "thrill"
of being stocked with explosive gases.)But
the Tongesayi team didn't use ICP-MS. They used something called
"XRF" -- almost certainly due to budgetary constraints. As
someone who has done a considerable amount of hands-on research into
trace element analysis of foods, I was absolutely shocked to learn
that this "scientific" study about to be published in a
science journal was conducted on a single XRF machine without the
results being independently confirmed through more accurate testing
methods. As much as I feel the professor was trying to do the right
thing with this research, if you are going to announce something of
such magnitude to the world, for God's sakerun
a redundancy checkon
another machine! (Is this not common sense?)Personally,
if I were going to put my name behind test results, I would choose a
technology such as ICP-MS: Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass
Spectrometry. Also just called "ICP Mass Spec" for short.

A
quick overview of ICP-MS mass spectrometry

ICP-MS
machines are made by several companies such asAgilent,Perkin
Elmer,BrukerandThermo.
They are capable of detecting trace elementsdown
to parts per TRILLION,
with astonishing accuracy and repeatability.

The
really freaking thing is that they can measure all the elements of a
given sample simultaneously.
So in 2-3 minutes, you get a full read-out of everything in the
sample: lead, cadmium, mercury, magnesium, iron... and if you're
really lucky then some barium and thallium, too.

Running
ICP-MS machines, however, is tricky business. For starters, you need
a ridiculously air-tight clean room with active HEPA filtration, or
the trace elements in microscopic pieces of dust in the air will
throw your results. ICP-MS also typically uses a nebulizer to atomize
a liquid solution, and because of the extreme precision of the ICP-MS
components, this solution can contain a maximum of 0.2% TDS
(dissolved solids). This means solid food samples must be digested,
then diluted, and then re-run through the analyzer if the dilution
level is still not sufficient to bring the element to within the
window of detection by the machine.

ICP-MS
is expensive and complicated. And it uses a lot of gas. You'll burn
through dozens of gas tanks ofargon
gaseach
year. (Well, not actually "burning" them. The gas is
harmlessly exhausted after each analysis.) And if you want to run
so-called "collision cell" quantitative elemental analysis
-- which offers far more precision than standard ICP-MS -- you might
end up using other gases such as helium or even nitrogen.

ICP-MS
isn't cheap, either. You need to build out a lab room that can keep
the machine free of contaminants. Just the room itself might easily
cost you $200,000. Most of these machines have a plasma torch that
needs 240V electricity hardwired in (because it takes juice to turn
solids into their plasma state, right?), and with the auto-diluters,
auto-digesters, analysis software and everything else you need to run
these systems, you can easily spend $500,000 - $1 million. And that
doesn't count the salary and the health insurance benefits of the lab
technician you'll need to hire to run the whole thing... the very
same guy who will quit right in the middle of your urgent batch run
that needs to be done immediately.

But
of all the trace element detection technologies available today, I
have personally never heard of anyone using XRF as the sole machine
for announcing scientific results of heavy metals contamination for
food staples.

How one machine
might consistently produce false lead contamination results

It's
painfully easy for one machine to produce consistently erroneous
results due to a number of reasons. Just off the top of my head, I
can think of at least four reasons why this might happen:

#1)
The machine is incorrectly calibrated. These machines must be
frequently calibrated against samples with known quantities of
detected elements. If they are poorly calibrated, they will obviously
produce incorrect results.

#2)
Contamination during sample preparation. Whoever was preparing the
rice samples was likely using some sort of acidic solution to
"digest" the rice into a testable liquid. This process of
sample preparation provides a multitude of opportunities for
contamination, including the acidic solution, lab ware used in the
preparation, ambient lead in airborne dust, the handling of samples
by lab technicians, etc.

#3)
The machine's sampling area was somehow contaminated with lead. I'm
not sure what technology this XRF machine uses to hold the sample
being tested, but it is possible that the same machine had previously
been used to test something such as an actual piece of lead... and
somehow enough lead remained in the testing instrument to give off
high ppm with all subsequent samples. This could be determined by
testing the unit with a known quantity of ultra-purified laboratory
water known to contain no lead whatsoever. If the reading still shows
high lead, then the problem is the instrument.

4)
Altered data. You can never discount the possibility that someone
involved in the research sought to alter the numbers in order to fit
their desired outcome. I'm not saying this was the case with this
rice research, but it has happened before and must always be
considered as a possible explanation.

Conclusion

So
that's a long-winded way of saying the "lead contamination in
rice" paper has been retracted, and it was pulled because the
people who did the study realized their machine was producing
erroneous results.

So,
on one hand, you could say they are doing the "responsible
thing" by retracting this paper themselves, but on the other
hand this isa
pretty big whopper to make in a science journaland
a public symposium of the American Chemical Society.

Importantly,the retraction of
this paper does not mean rice from China isn't contaminated with
lead.
There is lead in rice from China, but as Consumer Reports shows, it's
most likely in the ppb range than ppm.

Obviously,
we're going to continue to investigate this issue and work to bring
you more news (and our own lab results) about metals contaminants in
food. For now, just remember thatnot
every published "scientific" paper is
accurate.
There are retractions every single day, and even when people don't
intend to make mistakes, they often get caught up in them anyway.

About Me

18 years old, having cleaned out my HS library, I concluded the only ambition worth having was becoming a great genius. An inner voice cheered. Yet it is my path I have shared much to the Human Gesalt. Mar 2017 - 4.56 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO described as the SPACE TIME PENDULUM. Sep 2010 -My essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in Relativity. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled Paradigms Shift. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data, record impressions, interpretations and to introduce new insights to readers.